Oct 24, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

Gay challengers are running against gay incumbents for the only two contested seats on the nine-member Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission, with gay issues taking a back seat to the hot topic of two pending development projects.

The gays running in the Dupont Circle races are among 23 known gay candidates running for election or re-election to ANC seats throughout the city. Most are running unopposed.

Congress created the ANCs as part of the city’s home rule government in the early 1970s. They are comprised of unpaid elected officials who are charged with advising city officials and city regulatory agencies on issues of concern to neighborhoods.

ANCs don’t have specific regulatory powers, but agencies are instructed under the law to give “great weight” to their recommendations.

Long-time Dupont Circle observers have said the area’s high concentration of gay residents and gay businesses long ago brought about a harmonious mix of gays and straights. This prompted many gays to become involved in civic affairs, with some coming down on opposing sides of disputes regarding parking, noise and nightlife entertainment issues.

“I feel it is important that the views of all my neighbors are heard, not just the views of the small number of people who attend ANC meetings,” said Doug Alan Rogers, a gay candidate challenging longtime gay incumbent Ramon Estrada.

Estrada, who currently serves as chair of the Dupont Circle ANC, known as ANC 2B, did not return a call seeking comment for this story. In the past, he has described himself as a strong advocate for the residents of his single-member district, ANC 2B09, as well as all Dupont Circle residents.

But Rogers has taken up the call of Estrada’s longtime critics, who say he has emerged as the leader of a faction of ANC 2B that consistently opposes and creates obstacles for entertainment and nightlife businesses, as well as business development projects, that a majority of the residents support.
“It seems stopping clubs is his first priority,” Rogers said.

Rogers points to the widely publicized effort in 2005 by Estrada and his domestic partner, Elwyn Ferris, to film gay customers entering and leaving Fuego, a Latino dance party once held along U Street, N.W.

Estrada led efforts at the time to challenge the liquor license of Fuego’s host business, Cada Vez
restaurant.

Estrada said Cada Vez had a reputation of creating noise and neighborhood disturbances and had been operating illegally as a nightclub disguised as a restaurant.

Cada Vez owners disputed the assertions, saying they were operating within the law and were not creating neighborhood problems. The owners later closed the restaurant and moved their operations, including the Fuego party, to another location in Northeast D.C.

Rogers said he is concerned that Estrada is now targeting two important development projects on 14th Street — the eastern boundary of ANC 2B — for unnecessary delays, if not outright opposition.

A large-scale residential and retail complex at 14th and U streets N.W., known as the Utopia project, is one of the projects that has emerged as an issue in the ANC race.

A smaller project, put together by D.C. businessman Constantine Stavropoulos in a three-story warehouse building at 14th and T streets N.W., is seeking to include a 24-hour diner, a comedy club and a yoga and dance studio.

Stavropoulos said Estrada told him he would seek to block a 24-hour diner and would place restrictions on Stavropoulos’s plans for outdoor seating for the diner.

“He basically said, ‘No, no, no,’” Stavropoulos recalled Estrada as saying.

Two Dupont Circle residents who know Estrada said they believe his aim is to make sure both projects don’t create neighborhood problems and that he would likely agree to the projects if certain changes are made. But the two said the changes sought by Estrada could result in delays in the completion of the projects.

Joseph Delano Rojakovick, the other gay challenger, is running against longtime gay ANC Commissioner Phil Carney for the ANC 2B07 seat, which represents the 17th Street, N.W. residential and commercial strip.

Carney, who was among the volunteers that helped form the Whitman-Walker Clinic in the 1970s, is recognized as a tireless advocate for clean streets and tree plantings. His supporters credit him with almost single handedly prodding residents to clean up dog excrement through the use of “pooper-scoopers.”

Carney told the Blade that he has always favored a balance between the needs and concerns of residents and businesses, and he favors voluntary agreements as a condition for approving liquor licenses for bars and restaurants.

Rojakovick said he would not go so far as to call Carney an obstructionist to development ...